A sanctuary begins where one can stop being on guard, at least for a moment. Complete safety is hardly attainable, yet without a safe haven, it is impossible to live in the long term, form relationships, care for others, dream, or create. What protects us also defines us. Every sanctuary has its limits.  

The exhibition Shelter is based on the specific context of the Bastion U Božích muk. The former fortifications separated the protected space from external danger. To this day, its spatial layout combines two contradictory gestures: the walls define the space, yet above their line, a view opens up onto the city, the landscape, and the horizon over the Nusle Valley. The exhibited works further explore the tension inherent in this situation. Through their scale and volume, they both divide and open up the space; they provide points of reference, yet they can also constrict, restrict, or unsettle. 

Shelter also builds upon the previous exhibition project Eyes of the Skin, which in 2025 presented the work of faculty, students, and alumni from three sculpture studios at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. While Eyes of the Skin focused on the physical and sensory experience of space, this year’s exhibition shifts the focus to the question of how we inhabit space, how it shapes us, and what makes it a place that can provide us with support. At the same time, it expands the range of represented schools: in addition to the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (UMPRUM) in Prague, the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (FaVU VUT), the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava, and the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia (ZČU) in Pilsen are also represented. The exhibition thus connects different generations and forms of contemporary sculptural thought across schools and regions. 

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard conceives of the dwelling as an environment in which the material arrangement intertwines with memory and imagination. For him, a house, a nest, a shell, or a nook become models of an intimate relationship with a place. At Bastion, this intimate experience shifts to an open environment exposed to the weather, the passage of time, and the viewer’s movement. Here, the shell may be permeable, the support temporary, and the relationship to the place ever-changing.

The meaning of individual works is shaped in part by the materials and the manner of their creation. Wood, ceramics, metal, concrete, and found objects bring their own structure, time, and traces of previous forms of existence to the sculptures. Alongside geometric order, the irregularity of organic forms, the trace of the hand, and the mutability of the material itself remain evident in many of the works. In some works, the question of inhabiting extends beyond the boundaries of the human world—to other forms of life and to the materials that help shape the environment. 

A refuge thus does not appear as a definitively defined safe space, but as a fluid relationship between the body, matter, place, and environment. At the same time, the sculptures remain exposed to the weather, the passage of time, the gaze, and the changes in their surroundings. Here, a refuge is not the opposite of exposure, but rather its temporarily habitable form.

Exhibited artists: Patrik Adamec, Marie Boková, Jakub Brázda, Radim Brož, Michael Jan Bublík, Markéta Donátová, Matyáš Fiala, Jan Hendrych, Anna Holínská, Vojtěch Hrubant, Matouš Lipus, Tomáš Medek, Vojtěch Míča, Luděk Míšek, Tomáš Pavlacký, Markéta Picková, Barbora Procházková, Nicolas Prokop, Tereza Šrámková, Dagmar Šubrtová, Benedikt Tolar, Erika Velická 

Curator: Martina Mrázová  

Exhibition Supervisor: Prof. Ak. Soch. Vojtěch Míča, Head of the Studio of Figurative Sculpture and Medals 

Production: Tereza Homzová, Matouš Lipus 

Acknowledgments: Filip Pinkas, Vavřinec Vyoral, Matěj Kučera  

Organizer: EUROPEAN HOUSE s.r.o. (BASTION PRAGUE RESTAURANT) 

Organizer: Studio of Figurative Sculpture and Medals, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

The event is held under the patronage of Jan Korseska, Mayor of the Prague 2 district.  

The exhibition is made possible with support from the State Cultural Fund of the Czech Republic.